


Mutual

by Turbulent_Muse



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Au where Eddie gets locked in a cage, But I've shown it to a couple people, Cannon-typical Cannibalism, Canon-Typical Violence, Drake is sleazy, Human Experimentation, Imprisonment, Kidnapping, Major Character Injury, Not Beta Read, Other, Sharing a Body, Starvation, and humans, eating rabbits, inspired by venomtots on tumblr, teaching aliens about friendship, when venom's involved pronouns can get weird
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-19
Updated: 2018-11-19
Packaged: 2019-08-25 13:39:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 17,671
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16662019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turbulent_Muse/pseuds/Turbulent_Muse
Summary: "It all comes down to bad timing."AU where Eddie breaking into the Life Foundation goes a bit differently. Stretches out the movie's timeline but the general plot of the last half is mostly the same.





	Mutual

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by venomtots on tumblr.

Eddie Brock picks up his mail and finds an eviction notice.

It’s not really a surprise, he’s been barely scraping by for a while and the “past due” notices have been getting more and more insistent. He mentally goes over every single purchase he’s made in the last six months and curses it, but he can’t bring himself to regret giving so much to Maria. He wonders with a hollow laugh if she’ll share her nest of blankets with him because of it.

There’s a heavy feeling in his gut when he sees that nest empty on his way to Mrs. Chen’s. He’s going to buy himself a shitty dinner and some beer and process his future in the morning, as one does. But then he runs into Dr. Skirth who tells him about the what the Life Foundation is doing and by god if he doesn’t have nothing left to lose. And a grudge, he has one of those too. An even bigger grudge than he had yesterday.

He says yes right away.

**……**

The host is dying. Again. She is not a good enough match and is rejecting Venom, but Venom makes sure to keep her alive as long as possible, consuming her insides slow enough that they can use her lungs for as long as possible. They had seen Phage struggle and die without a host, unable to breathe this world’s toxic air. Maybe too many bad matches had made Phage weak, or maybe the human scientists had waited too long on purpose, Venom doesn’t know. Venom doesn’t want to die.

They also don’t want to be alone in this place. If any of the others, Riot especially, knew they felt saddened by the loss of Phage they would laugh, and call them weak. What value was another when they were trapped in cages? What use was company? What purpose in caring other than caring for self?

But Venom has never liked being alone. Venom is practically an outcast because of this but it is the truth. They cannot even symbiose with this host well enough to talk to her, and damn the opinion of their race but they wish they could. Wish for a good match, one that won’t die, a host they can keep. Both because of stupid sentimentality and the magnifying effect this wretched situation has on loneliness. They want someone to be with and talk to always so they are never alone again. Venom is scared of dying and does not want to be alone.

Venom does not think that Riot is coming back for them. It has been too long. Too long spent alone in a small tube waiting then too long in bodies so desperate to fight them off that they killed themselves. Venom does not know if Riot is dead or is merely completing the mission without assistance. Venom’s people are not sentimental and Riot is even less so than most. Venom doesn’t know if Riot would bother to come get them even after completing the mission. It is logical that he would not, what would they even matter to Riot then?

Then there’s someone new in the lab. The host recognizes this someone. She thinks he can save her. She sees an ally, a rescuer.

Venom sees a perfect match, can sense it. It’s like this strange alien world felt their wish and answered it. So when this newcomer breaks the glass Venom clumsily makes the host spring forward and then leaves her, which is more stress than her weakened body can take. She dies. But Venom lives.

The new host is concerned for the old one. He checks to see if she’s alive and mourns when she isn’t. He cares. Venom feels a twinge of remorse that she had to die, half because it was such a waste and half because of the new host, the perfect host’s sadness. It’s an illogical sadness that he has. Any other of Venom’s race would feel nothing but disgust at such a display. Venom thinks it’s almost a bit endearing. This host can be sad and weak right now, that is fine. Venom will be strong for him. This host is Venom’s “never alone again” home in this world and they will protect him.

**……**

It all comes down to bad timing.

The guards swarm into the room just after Eddie realizes that Maria is dead. There’s barely time for a fight before they shove him into a cell with thick transparent walls and lock him in. He hits his head on the back wall and ends up stunned on the floor for a while. When he wakes up he sees Carlton Drake looking down at him from outside the cell, a small crowd of security guards and scientists (including Skirth, she hadn’t been caught, that was something) standing behind him. The cell is just like the one Maria was in, little more than a clear cube with all the comfort and amenities of a prison cell and about half the space.

“Eddie Brock.” Drake says, casually smug. “We meet again.”

Eddie plans on getting to his feet but he feels dizzy enough that he stops on his knees, leaning forward with his hands against the glass and (dammit) looking up at the other man.

“The hell you doing to these people, Drake?” He asks, indignant, picturing Maria’s lifeless form.

“They are being given the chance to be a part of something greater than themselves.” Eddie gives him a look that makes it clear he doesn’t buy that line. Drake continues. “Well, you’ll find out for yourself soon enough.”

“Wait.” Fear begins to leak into Eddie’s voice. “Wait, wait, you can’t be serious. You can’t experiment on me, you can’t keep me here, that’s kidnapping.”

“Is it?” Drake gets more smug. “Or did Eddie Brock simply disappear after failing to find a steady job for half a year and finally being evicted from his apartment? Is there even anyone who’s going to look for you? Who’ll notice you’re gone?”

Anne. Eddie hopes. Mrs. Chen? He hopes more realistically.

“Anyway,” Drake continues. “You wouldn’t last long out there if we did let you go. You see, when Maria died the symbiote within her transferred itself to you.”

“What?! No! I don’t have one of those…things inside me. I can’t.”

“You do. Tell me, how are you feeling, Eddie? Dizzy? Feverish? Hungry?”

Eddie indeed feels all of these things. As well as a sinking feeling in his gut that gets worse the more Drake keeps talking.

“Don’t worry, we’ll keep you alive as long as we can. Since it didn’t reject you outright that should at least be a few days.” Drake begins to walk out as he says this. “Dr. Skirth, restrain him and hook him up to an IV. Then go home, we’ll see how our new patient is doing in the morning.”

“Y-Yes, Mr. Drake.” Skirth replies and walks off in a different direction than the others. Several security guards remain in the area. She returns shortly with something that looks very much like a slab Dr. Frankenstein would use and an IV.

“Stand against the back wall of the containment unit.” She tells him. Her voice cold and professional.

Eddie drags himself to his feet with difficulty and does so. Skirth opens the door and enters the cell. She closes it quickly behind her.

Eddie walks up close to her and speaks almost in a whisper.

“Skirth, you gotta get me out of here.”

“I can’t!” She whispers back. “Drake is increasing security and if I get caught it’s not just me that’s in danger. It’s my family. My kids. Besides, this is the only place that has any chance of keeping you alive now.”

Eddie sighs in resignation. “Okay, then you gotta get out of town. Take your family and leave, get as far away as you can.”

“No. I can’t do that. Eddie, I got you into this mess, it’s my fault you’re dying, I have to try to save you.”

“No, you don’t, just—”

“Yes I do!” Then, she continues at a normal volume. “Now, get in the restraints.” Eddies does as she says. As she’s strapping him down she continues in a whisper. “We don’t usually leave people in these things overnight. Either it’s just bad timing or you really pissed Drake off.”

“Probably both.” Eddie responds.

“Do you think anyone else will turn against him, now that he’s escalated to kidnapping?”

“Probably not.” Eddie says ruefully. “Things are gonna be different now, but if anyone can end up in here that includes them, so I think everyone’s gonna be working very hard to make sure they do whatever Drake asks.”

Skirth starts hooking the IV up to him. “Try to sleep, you should be through the worst of the fever by morning but you might wake up a little delirious.”

“Great.” He mumbles sarcastically. “Take care of yourself, Skirth, you’re the only friend I’ve got in here.”

“I will. You…try to sleep. As long as you can.” She says, then she leaves. She tries to convince the guards that, not Eddie, but a different patient needs to be watched over night but they tell her that, on Drake’s orders, no one was to enter the lab after dark unless there was a red alert, in which case the on-call staff will handle it. The security guards move to just outside the doors once Skirth leaves.

This leaves Eddie alone, in the dark, strapped vertically to a slab for the night with nothing but the distant sound of pained noises (must be that other “patient”) to fill the quiet. It is at this point that Eddie starts crying.

He’s cold inside like you only ever are when you have a bad fever and he can feel the sweat soaking through his clothes and he wants nothing more than to be able to crawl over to the cot and lie down but he’s been denied even that small comfort.

Skirth said his fever would probably break by morning but he has no idea what will be next after that, only that he should expect to be dead in a few days. He’s going to spend the short rest of his life in this place. He doesn’t even try to hold back the tears.

**……**

Venom is furious. They are back in another cage, they could not protect the new host, had not yet had enough time to bond. But they were bonding now, making this body a part of themself—of himself. He would make the host’s identity a part of himself too.

The host—Eddie is feeling sad and scared. Because Venom failed him. But he will not fail again. And the situation is not as bad as Eddie thinks. He is not alone. He will not be alone in this place like Venom was before. Neither of them will be.

**……**

“Fuck. Fuck. I’m gonna fucking die.” Eddie says in between sobs.

**“You are not going to die.”**

“Ah! Who said that?!” It’s too close to be coming from the man in the other cell, it sounds like it’s coming from right next to him. Or closer.

**“I did. And we will get out of this place of death and pain.”**

“Great. Great, now I’m going crazy too, on top of everything.”

**“That would be inconvenient.”**

It’s at this time that the sedative Skirth well-meaningly slipped into the IV takes effect and Eddie drifts off to sleep.

……

Eddie’s dreams are filled with odd images and feelings. Most of them make sense given his circumstances, like bright lights, hopelessness, a feeling of confinement like walls so tight he can hardly move. But the most odd thing is that he wakes up with the feeling in the back of his mind that he isn’t alone anymore, even though the lab is still dark and empty when he opens his eyes. Even drugged, his conditions were too shitty to allow for a full night’s rest.

He does a quick self-assessment. He feels moderately better. He's burning hot rather than cold, he thinks his fever must be going down, he’s a bit less tired, he’s sore from the restraints, and mostly he’s just—

**“Hungry.”**

The voice in his head declares insistently. It’s a thorough hunger, gnawing deep in his guts and filling him with weakness and drive at the same time. But there’s nothing he can do about it so he just waits for something to happen.

After awhile the lights come on. People begin to drift into the room and start their workday. When Dr. Skirth arrives she heads immediately to Eddie’s cell under the pretense of changing his IV.

“I got my family out.” She whispers to him. “They’re going far away, I don’t know exactly where, but I can contact them.”

“Good.” Eddie whispers back. “You should go too.”

“I told you, I’m not going to just leave you here. I’m gonna try to keep you alive.”

“Then get me some food.” Eddie begs. “I’m starving in here.”

“Hey Skirth!” One of the other scientists calls over. “Why are you chatting with him?”

“He keeps asking for food.” She calls back, covering her tracks quickly. “Just like the others did. I was telling him that’s what the IV’s for.”

“Well, next time don’t bother. Drake says to spend as little time inside the containment units as possible.”

“Got it!” Skirth calls back. She gives Eddie an apologetic look and leaves.

Soon, more scientists and guards arrive to move the slab he’s tied to into a larger cell, one with all sorts of different machines and monitors which he is then hooked up to. Over the day scientists will occasionally come in to hook him up to something else or to adjust one of the machines.

When not in the cell the scientists just sit at their computers and monitor the results of the tests. Eddie hears them throw around terms like “complete integration”, “no internal damage so far”, “no signs of rejection”, and “potential full symbiosis” but he has no idea what most of it means and what any of it means for him.

Some of the scientists look like they’re trying not to think about the fact that they’re keeping people in cages. Some of them just look detached. Eddie overhears a few making bets on how long he’ll survive.

After awhile he hears the voice again.

**“Hungry.”**

Eddie screams in surprise. The scientists look at him for a moment and then go back to their work.

**“We need food.”**

“I’m getting food through the IV.” Eddie mutters quietly. He’s still a bit out of it but has enough presence of mind to not want to seem crazy.

**“We need real food. Solid. Flesh. Organs.”**

Eddie wishes he could bury his head in his hands. Then he hears something even more disturbing.

“Oh, shit!” One of the scientists yells. “He’s crashing!”

There’s commotion on the other side of the lab.

“Code red!”

“Get the container in there!”

“Prep the next volunteer!”

“Someone clean up this mess!”

**“Agony.”**

“Huh?” Eddie questions. But the voice goes quiet after that. Retreating into his head in a way that feels almost sorrowful but mostly angry. Eddie’s angry too. And shaken. Someone in the same position as him just died.

And he can’t even properly process that because he’s still so hungry.

Eventually a few scientists return to their stations by his cell.

“Hey, man, can I get some real food?” He pleads with the next one that enters his cage.

“You’re getting all the nutrients you need through the IV.”

“I’m, uh, I’m not so sure about that.” Eddie replies. The scientist ignores him and leaves.

After an unbearable amount of time Skirth returns and wheels him back to the smaller cell. As she’s undoing the restraints he asks a question that’s been gnawing at him almost as much as the hunger.

“Skirth, the people who’ve died…how did they die?”

“…Don’t worry about that, Eddie.”

“Skirth, please. I need to know.”

She pauses. Then she leans in close and whispers as she undoes the strap around his neck.

“The alien eats them alive from the inside.”

Then she leaves. Eddie feels numb. He finds clean clothes on the cot, white hospital-scrub-looking pants and shirt, and he’s sweat-soaked enough to give up on dignity and put them on. Now he looks the part of a lab rat too. Maybe before his clothes made the scientists uncomfortable, made them see him as too much of a person.

Eddie lays down on the cot and looks up at the ceiling and thinks. Every little pain he feels has him thinking more. And the hungrier he feels the more he wonders if it’s really him feeling it at all.

**……**

Venom is starving.

Venom so very much wants to stay with this perfect match, with Eddie. Not to go back to the endless stream of unfit hosts and being locked in that small tube and waiting to die.

But he’s starving.

There’s a simple organ, a strong one. It pumps blood—heart. It’s called the heart. It can stand to be a little weaker. Venom can pick up the slack if he needs to.

He is ashamed to eat this host, but he buries that. He tries to (for once) just be normal like the rest of his people and think of this body as food and satisfy his hunger before he starves. He will take what he can from the heart without the host dying.

But he knows that that will not be enough. Not for long. It’s time to break out of here as soon as possible.

**……**

The next day is more of the same, but with more intense hunger and the added worry of what it might mean. Eddie no longer feels feverish though, in fact he actually feels completely healthy. Part of him starts to hope that by some miracle he’s not gonna die.

At the end of the day when he’s back in his little cage Drake shows up to personally check on him.

**“Hate him. The one who leads the captors.”**

The voice in Eddie’s head states. It’s been quiet all day and Eddie had actually starting hoping it’d come back just to alleviate the boredom.

“No argument there.” He agrees quietly.

Drake talks with one of the scientists that was observing him today.

“The bond is completely stable,” the scientist begins explaining. “But the host’s heart has atrophied. He’s dying like the others.”

Eddie starts to panic at this and fights to hold back tears. He really was going to die in this place like that other man. Like Maria.

**“Stop crying. You are making us look weak. I will not kill you. You are mine. I will keep you alive. I am just…so hungry.”**

Eddie has a realization. “That’s what you’re supposed to be?” He whispers. “The alien thing, the parasite?”

**“PARASITE?!”**

Eddie feels every muscle in his body tense and he falls from the cot to the floor. He yells in pain.

**“I am not a parasite!”**

“But you—”

**“Get us out of here and find us some other food! Then I will stop eating your heart and repair it!”**

At this point Drake and the others still in the lab are all staring at Eddie.

“Get me a goddamn cheeseburger!” He yells angrily at them as he picks himself up.

“This isn’t a hotel, Brock.” Drake snarks.

“Sir,” the scientist who Eddie had spoken to before chimes in. “He was asking for solid food earlier. All the volunteers that don’t reject the symbiote outright ask for solid food. It might deter the symbiote from consuming him.”

“Yeah, that seems pretty fucking likely!” Eddie yells.

“Hmm.” Drake considers. “Let’s see if you’re right. Someone go buy Mr. Brock a cheeseburger!” Drake commanded.

About an hour later a guard in full body armour is standing in the cell, holding a cheeseburger up to Eddie’s mouth while Eddie is strapped into the restraints again. Eddie takes a ravenous bite of the burger before quickly spitting it out.

**“Wrong!”**

“No! Something’s wrong! This is dead!” He barely knows what he’s saying or why, the hunger has gotten so strong and so specific but Eddie has no idea what it is he needs.

Drake ponders Eddie’s reaction for a moment. “Bring in a rabbit. A live one.” He orders.

Soon two guards are walking into the cell with a white rabbit in a cage. The one in back moves to set the cage down before moving to close the door and that’s when Venom makes his move.

Eddie bursts free of the restraints and is instantly covered in a tarry black form with a monstrous face. Venom grabs the guard nearest the door and picks him up, bringing him in close and biting off his head. Then he does the same to the other guard before lunging at the open door.

But someone has recovered from the shock fast enough to press a button and suddenly the most terrible noise is surrounding Venom and he screams and retreats back into Eddie, who falls over and curls into a fetal position still inside the cell. The door closes fast and the noise stops.

“What the fuck?! What the fuck did you just do?!” Eddie yells. “You ate their heads!” He laments more quietly, his face buried in his hands.

**“Now we are no longer hungry.”**

The voice says, sounding pleased.

Everyone, including Eddie, looks horrified at what just happened. Except for Drake, he looks enraptured.

“Amazing.” He says.

“Sir?” Someone asks.

“He’s achieved complete symbiosis.” Drake looks on in awe for a moment. Then he continues. “We’re done for the day. We need to let him rest. We’ll continue in the morning. What was that alarm?” He asks a scientist as he leads them out of the lab.

Everyone clears out fast and Eddie is alone with his thoughts. And with the monster in his head. The one that likes eating human flesh. It surrounds him again and begins eating the rest of the guards’ bodies. Eddie can’t feel his own body anymore, he doesn’t know if it’s just encased or has been transformed into the alien, but either way he’s just a mind, a nebulous self watching the other’s actions. He tries to communicate, he seems to be successful.

_“I thought you weren’t hungry anymore.”_

“If we just leave them here then they will rot and go to waste.” The alien responds. “We’d regret not eating them now the next time we got hungry.”

_“I think that regret would definitely be just a you thing, actually.”_

Eddie responds. He catches a glimpse of his reflection in the cell wall and shudders at the sight of the creature. It’s huge, jet black, and looks to be made entirely of slime and teeth.

_“You’re real. Not just a voice in my head.”_

“Yes.” The reply comes through a mouthful of guts.

_“You’re eating people.”_

“It is what we do.”

_“What are you?”_

“I am Venom.”

_“You’re eating my heart!”_

“Not anymore. Now I can fix it and make us strong enough to break out of here.” Venom finishes eating the corpses and sinks back under Eddie’s skin.

“And then what are you gonna do? Eat more people?”

**“Most likely.”**

“Oh god.”

**“But the main plan is to get to Carlton Drake’s rocket.”**

“I’m all for taking anything we can from this douchebag, but why?”

But Venom wasn’t finished with his train of thought.

**“We will acquire the rocket with or without Riot and we will show everyone that I am not…”**

“Not what?”

**“…A loser.”**

Eddie couldn’t help but laugh at this. “So I get stuck with the loser alien parasite, huh?”

**“Not a parasite! Apologize!”**

“I’ll apologize when my heart is working again.”

**“You should not be so smug. You are also a loser.”**

“Bullshit, how do you know?”

**“I am inside your head, Eddie, I know all about you. I know that you recently ruined your entire life.”**

“Hey, Carlton Drake ruined my life.”

**“He is ruining it now. You ruined it first.”**

“Shut up. I’m not listening to an alien that’s eating my guts lecture me about how to live my life. I’m going to take advantage of the fact that I’m not tied up and everyone’s left early—”

**“You’re welcome.”**

“And get some sleep so I don’t have to think about any of this.”

Eddie crawls up onto the cot and closes his eyes and tries to fall asleep for a moment but then something occurs to him.

“Hey, alien, Venom. Why didn’t you do something sooner?”

**“I was waiting for a moment when we might have a good chance of escaping this cell. It was critical that they underestimate us.”**

“Guess that’s ruined then.”

**“Yes. In part.”**

Venom sounds annoyed.

“We’ll come up with another escape plan in the morning.” Eddie yawns. Then he falls asleep.

……

The first realization that Eddie comes to upon groggily waking is that an alien had made him into a cannibal. The second is that he’s locked in a cage.

The second remembrance and the anger that accompanies it somewhat softens the blow of the first.

By far the worst realization is that Carlton Drake is standing over him, looking down at him from just outside the cell.

“Good morning, Brock.”

“Go to hell.” Eddie says and he stays in the cot and closes his eyes, as if he was trying to get more sleep.

Drake sighs exasperatedly. “Mr. Brock, I need you to do what you did yesterday.”

“Kill more of your guards?”

“Cut the shit. Show me the symbiote. Show me your inhuman form.”

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Uh, because you want me to.” Eddie says petulantly. Venom hums in approval in his head.

“Eddie,” Drake sighs again. “Do you even realize what you’re a part of? You’re body has achieved complete symbiosis with an alien being, the key to humanity’s survival in—”

“I don’t actually care, about your space colony plan, is the thing.”

Drake looks a bit thrown off. “Who told you that was the goal of this experiment?”

Dr Skirth starts subtly panicking in the background. Eddie tries his best to keep his cool and is successful.

“I’m an investigative reporter, Drake. Finding things out is what I do.”

Drake seems satisfied with this answer. “I’m going to come back later and see if you’re feeling more cooperative.” And he leaves.

For a tediously long time nothing happens. Eddie tries listening to what the scientists are saying. Apparently they’re trying giving solid food to the other test subject but it isn’t changing anything. They’re still dying.

Eddie sits in the corner in the back of his cell and looks at the ceiling. He thinks about that for a while. “Why am I different?” He asks no one. He gets an answer anyway.

**“We are a match. I could sense it when I first saw you.”**

Eddie’s about to ask what that means when he hears a different voice.

“It’s just luck, really.” Dr. Skirth says from outside his cell. “We think it’s like an organ transplant. You have to be—”

“A match.” Eddie finishes.

“Right. But even when there’s no sign of rejection the symbiotes keep eating the hosts and we don’t know why. Well, maybe we do now.”

Eddie looks around and sees that everyone is gone except her.

“It’s someone’s birthday and they’re having a party in another room. I offered to stay behind in case there was an emergency. Besides, if anyone asks I can just say I was trying to get information out of you.”

“Has anything like what happened yesterday happened before?” Eddie asks.

“No.” Skirth says, sounding haunted. “No, that was new. Eddie, you ate those people!”

“No, no, that wasn’t me.” Eddie gets up and goes to the front wall of his cell, he puts his hands on it pleadingly. “That was the alien.”

“It took over your body?!” Skirth asks.

“Yes! I had no control.”

“But why would it wait so long to do something like this?”

“He wanted them to underestimate him until there was a real chance of escape.”

“Are…are you saying that the symbiote is a sapient creature? With a mind capable of rational thought?”

“Yes! Skirth, he’s talking to me.” Eddie points to his head. “In here.”

Dr. Skirth pauses for a moment. “Prove it.”

“What? You mean like tell you something the symbiote and you would know but not me?”

“Yes.”

“What would that even—”

**“I think I know something.”**

Eddie pauses for a few moments before speaking to Skirth again.

“When they first got here to the lab there were three of them. One of them was yellow, they died before I got here. The blue one is still alive. The one in me now was in two other human hosts before Maria, the host he was in when I got here. The first two rejected him and died immediately, but Maria…Maria would have lasted about another day.” Eddie starts to choke up a bit at this last part.

Dr. Skirth looks shocked. “Okay. Okay, I believe you. We have to tell Drake.”

“No!” Eddie insists at the same time Venom’s voice in his head does.

“But if he knew the symbiotes have minds of their own it would mean his plan won’t work. He’s been seeing them as just a means to an end.”

“And you think this will make him stop? Skirth, he already treats people—”

**“Are you saying I am not a person?”**

Venom asks, sounding more annoyed than offended.

“Sorry. Human beings, as a means to an end.”

“But why not try?”

“Because, we still need them to underestimate us as much as possible if we’re going to get out of this damn cage.”

“So…when you say ‘we’ you mean…”

“Me and Venom, yeah.”

“Venom?”

“That’s his name.”

“Okay. Okay.” Skirth says. “Okay, I won’t say anything. But Eddie, he’s eating your organs.”

“Only when he doesn’t have anything else alive to eat.”

“That’s not working with the other one. We tried regular food and then raw meat and even a rabbit we killed right in front of him but the symbiote isn’t manifesting and the host can’t keep any of it down.”

**“Agony may not see any point in keeping his host alive. Especially if they are not a perfect match.”**

“Oh, well that’s very comforting, thank you.” Eddie says sarcastically.

“What?”

“Oh, I, uh, I wasn’t talking to you.”

“Oh.”

**“You and I are a perfect match Eddie. I do not see why this distreses you.”**

Voices are heard just outside the lab door.

“Shit.” Skirth says. “I’ll try to talk to you more later. Just tell me one more thing.”

“What.”

“The blue symbiote, what’s their name?”

“It’s Agony. But why—”

“Shh! Gotta go.” Skirth hurries off to her workstation as other scientists start to come back into the room.

Eddie settles back into the back corner.

**“Eddie. Why do you feel sad whenever you think of Maria?”**

Venom inquires curiously.

“She was my friend and she’s dead.” Eddie mutters.

**“I have looked through your memories. She regularly took from you without giving anything of value in return.”**

“That’s not…She needed that cash more than me, and she doesn’t have to ‘give me anything of value’ to be my friend, that’s not what friend means.”

**“I am still unsure of the exact nature of this term. My people have no equivalent.”**

Eddie is again reminded of the horrifying tint to this alien’s…alienness.

“A friend is…is someone you want to be around. They make you feel happy and less alone and you care about them.”

**“I see…Thank you for explaining. I understand now.”**

“No problem.” Eddie mutters tiredly. “It was easier than I thought it’d be.”

If the scientists notice Eddie talking to himself they just figure he’s gone crazy. His recent behavior doesn’t suggest otherwise.

Suddenly an alarm is blaring. Eddie screams and Venom screams in his head. By the time the alarms stops armed guards have moved into the cell and strapped eddie to a table with stronger restraints. They then hook him up to several monitors and leave as quickly as possible.

Carlton Drake talks with some scientists for a few minutes before heading back over to Eddie’s cell.

“Since you were unwilling to cooperate we had to take certain measures in order to continue monitoring you.” He says casually. “Good news, you aren’t dying. Your heart has completely repaired itself.”

Eddie breathes a sigh of relief.

**“Told you I would.”**

Venom interjects.

“Would you like to tell me just how you did that, Mr. Brock?” Drake questions.

“Uh, no. No I wouldn’t.” Eddie replies snarkily.

“Hmm. I didn’t think it was something you did consciously anyway.” Drake dismisses. “So, now that your stay here no longer has a definite end, are you ready to be more cooperative? We might be able to give you better accomodations if you are.”

“You know, for some reason I just can’t seem to believe you. I wonder why? Oh, yeah, maybe it’s because you kidnapped me!”

Drake looks disappointed but not surprised. “Goodbye, Mr Brock. Enjoy your new life.” He walks away.

“Hey, Venom?” Eddie whispers once Drake is gone. “Can you bust out of these?”

**“When the right times comes, yes. But I might have to break a couple of your bones.”**

“Great.”

**“I will heal them after.”**

Eddie thinks for a minute. “So you really can heal me?”

**“Yes. I have complete control over your body.”**

“Wow. That’s, um, terrifying. Why let me do anything at all then? Why not just do everything yourself?”

**“That would be rude. You enjoy controlling your body.”**

“I do enjoy that, yeah. Thanks, I guess, for letting me have at least that much while I’m trapped in this box.”

“Hey!” A scientist calls over. “What are you doing?”

“Talking to myself, asshole!” Eddie shot back. “It’s not like there’s anything else for me to do.” Then he starts whispering again. “Why does it matter to you though, how I feel? I mean, from what little I know about your species it seems kinda out of character.”

**“…I have been alone in this place for a very long time. You are the first person I have been able to communicate with since these people first took me. I…I don’t want to be alone. I like talking to you. If you were upset with me you might not want to talk.”**

Eddie is a bit surprised by this answer, and by how vulnerable Venom sounds. “Y’know,” He responds. “If I’m telling the truth, I’m glad we can talk to each other too. It makes this place a hell of a lot less lonely.”

**“Yes, you much more welcoming than most hosts. Physically and mentally.”**

Eddie is unsure how to feel about this information.

**“So…”**

Venom says impatiently.

“What?”

**“What you said before.”**

Eddie thinks for a minute.

“Oh, uh, sorry. Sorry for calling you a parasite.”

**“Thank you.”**

Venom says, sounding very pleased. It’s almost amusing enough to make Eddie laugh despite his current situation.

……

That evening Drake returns but says nothing. Just stands and watches as a guard comes into his cell, takes the rabbit out of the tiny cage it had been cowering in, lets it roam free around Eddie and Venom’s cell, and leaves.

“What was the point of that?” Eddie asks. Then Drake presses a button and Eddie’s restraints automatically release. He drops to the floor in a heap.

“Hungry, Brock?” Drake asks as Eddie picks himself up off the floor. He is.

**“I will not eat this thing until night time. When everyone has left. When he has left.”**

“You know, I think I’ll save it for later.” Eddie says.

Drake huffs. “Suit yourself, Brock. I hope the symbiote doesn’t kill you while you wait.”

Soon after, everyone clears out for the night, leaving Eddie and Venom alone once again. Venom emerges as soon as he’s sure everyone’s gone and snatches the frightened rabbit as it tries to run. He brings it up to his mouth.

_“Wait!”_

“What?”

_“Kill it first before you eat it. Snap its neck.”_

“Why?”

_“So it isn’t in pain.”_

“Does that matter?”

Eddie does the mental equivalent of a sigh.

_“Yes. Of course…Look. This rabbit is in the same situation as us. Locked up in a cage in this hellhole waiting to die or have something worse happen to it. I know you need to eat it but don’t we at least owe it a quick, painless death?”_

“I suppose that makes sense.” Venom says, and he snaps the rabbit’s neck with his thumb before tossing it into his mouth. He rips it apart with his teeth just to taste its organs before swallowing the whole mess.

Eddie tries his best to keep his mind focussed on the fact that it’s not his organs being eaten. Venom moves back beneath Eddie’s skin and he’s left with the faintest taste of copper in the back of his throat.

“Bluh, gross.” He says. And lays down on the cot to sleep.

“Why wait until night to do that?” Dr. Skirth’s voice rings out through the empty lab. “Drake has a camera pointed at this cell anyway.”

Eddie sits up and looks around but doesn’t see her in the darkness.

“I told the guards outside that I left my phone here, so we can only talk for a minute. Lay back down and pretend to be sleeping.”

Eddie does so. “It’s, uh, it’s a stupid pride thing.” He says, answering her earlier question. “As much as possible we just do not wanna give Drake anything he wants.”

“Understandable.” Skirth replies. Then, after a short pause, “I tried talking to the other symbiote, Agony. I don’t know if they could hear me in that tube. Does…Does Venom know if they could?”

**“I am not sure.”**

“Maybe. What’d you say to them?”

“I said I was sorry that we’re doing this to them. And asked them not to kill the next host if they can help it, or at least not so fast so less people die overall.” Skirth sighs. “I don’t know, I just thought someone should talk to them. Treat them like a person.”

“Y’know, now that I’m not dying, you could leave. Go be with your family.”

“No!” Skirth insists. “You still need my help. You still need a friend in here. Look, I’m trying my best to learn the new security schedules so I can help you break out. Then I’ll leave.”

“Alright. Just…be careful, Dora.”

“I will. I gotta go. Bye.”

“Bye.”

Dr. Skirth leaves.

“Well. That’s something. We kind of have an escape plan.”

**“I was working on a plan too.”**

“Yeah, I’m sure you had something great.” Eddie says sarcastically. “But waiting for Dr. Skirth’s help is probably our best bet.”

**“Yes. Dr. Skirth is proving to be very useful. A good ally…Does that make her a good friend?”**

“Yeah, I think of Skirth as a friend. She’s risking her own safety to help us. That’s what friends do.”

**“Eddie…Dr. Skirth does not have to be your only friend in this place.”**

Eddie almost laughs.

“Are you asking if you’re my friend?”

**“Yes.”**

Venom says. So completely serious that Eddie no longer feels like laughing.

“Yeah. Yeah, you’re my friend, Venom. After all, we’re in this together.”

**“Yes. We are…Goodnight, Eddie.”**

“‘Night, Venom.”

……

Drake shows up again the next morning.

“Get in the restraints or we turn on the alarm.”

Eddie picks himself up and grumbles as he gets on the slab and the restraints automatically lock around his arms, legs, chest, and neck.

The following day is torturously boring and Eddie takes to talking to Venom more, whispering stories about his past, about his life, about Anne. Venom listens intently and asks a lot of questions so it’s a good way to pass the time.

At the end of the day Drake shows up again. Holding a rabbit in a cage.

“Show me the symbiote.”

“Get fucked with a cactus.”

“Will you at least talk to me, then? Answer a few questions? I hear you’ve been talking to yourself plenty.”

“I have a lot of things to say to you, actually, but I don’t think any of them are what you want to hear.”

Drake starts to get mad. His unflappable facade shaken.

“You ungrateful bastard!”

“Ungrateful?! For what?! For being made into a lab rat?!”

“For being made into a part of history! When I figure out what it was that allowed your body to successfully symbiose with an alien life form that will be what saves the human race, that will allow me to lead us into a new era.”

“Y’know, I always kinda thought this era was pretty awful. But if the alternative is you? I think we’re better off staying where we are.”

Drake slams a fist against the cell wall in anger. Then he sighs.

“Have it your way.” Drake starts walking away, taking the rabbit with him. “Maybe hunger will make you more reasonable.”

After the lights go out Eddie is still left in the restraints.

“Hey Venom, how long can we last without food?”

**“Your liver can grow back, right?”**

“Fuck.”

……

“So, the cat sits on my keyboard, somehow deletes half the article, adds a bunch of nonsense, then hits send.”

The combination of hunger and being strapped up vertically again is making sleep impossible so Eddie keeps telling stories.

“This creature sounds incredibly disruptive and inconvenient to have around. Why did you keep it in your home?”

“Anne likes it.” Eddie says through a yawn.

**“And you like Anne.”**

“Yeah. But she doesn’t like me anymore.”

**“That is your own fault.”**

“It was—”

**“You betrayed her trust and you violated her privacy. And you never apologized.”**

Eddie thinks for a moment then sighs. “You’re right. And now I’ll probably never get the chance to.”

**“You will. Once we break out of here. Which we will do.”**

“Yeah, okay, I’ll put it on the to do list right in between ‘Expose Carlton Drake’ and ‘Steal his spaceship’. ‘Apologize to Anne for being an asshole’.” Eddie laughs mirthlessly. “Damn, you sure got stuck with a pathetic loser as a host, huh?” He says, with a bit of self-pity.

**“Saying I am stuck with you implies I had no choice in the matter.”**

“Well, you really didn’t have much of one.” Eddie realizes as he says it. “Not if you wanted to have a chance of escaping.”

**“More of one than you did.”**

Venom’s tone is odd. Eddie thinks for a second.

“Are you…trying to apologize for bonding with me?”

**“No. Of course not. You are a perfect match and I would have left another host for you even if they weren’t dying. I am just…glad that you do not hold that against me. And that you are not entirely opposed to my presence.”**

Eddie probably should hold it against him, but he really doesn’t. He’s gotten to know Venom well enough to know that the alien has completely different cultural values to humans, and he knows that this damn lab had left Venom with limited options anyway.

“Well, I’m glad that it matters to you that I feel that way.” Eddie says.

Before Venom can respond, an alarm starts going off. But not the one designed to incapacitate them, it’s a normal alarm. An automated voice starts saying “Red Alert”.

Eddie feels sad for whatever poor bastard is dying.

**“Agony is dying.”**

Venom practically laments after a moment.

“Huh?”

**“The captors should be here by now. Agony needs a new host or the containment tube or they will die. Suffocate.”**

The alarm continues and no one comes. Eventually it stops.

“I guess the scientists on call were tired of watching people die.” Eddie says.

**“Phage and Agony have both died. Now I am the only one of my kind left in this place.”**

Venom sounds more sad than Eddie has ever heard him before. And just a bit afraid too.

“Hey. We’re not gonna die here. We’re gonna make it out. Skirth’s gonna get us out. And you’re not alone in here, alright? You have me.”

**“Yes. I know. Thank you, Eddie. For easing my distress in my moment of weakness.”**

“Feeling things isn’t weakness. And it’s no problem, that’s what friends are for.”

Eddie tries to sleep but is unable to. Now anger and sadness are keeping him up as well as the hunger and uncomfortable restraints.

“I want us to bite Drake’s head off as soon as we get the chance.”

**“Agreed.”**

……

The next morning Eddie watches groggily as Drake yells furiously at his staff about the dead symbiote. From what he can tell he’s just as upset about Eddie being all he has left to work with as he is about the loss of a valuable resource. Eventually he storms over to Eddie’s cell.

“Things are different now, Brock.”

“They sure as hell are.” Eddie replies a bit smugly.

“You are going to give me what I want.”

“Or what? You can’t do anything to me without risking damaging your last specimen. And by the way, you were sure saying ‘my symbiote’ a lot for someone who just made other people risk their lives bonding with them. Seriously, if this is such a huge honor like you keep saying it is then why didn’t you ever step into a cell yourself? No, you just forced others to make the sacrifice you weren’t willing to so you could get what you want.”

“You’re a petulant child that doesn’t understand progress!”

“And you’re a hypocritical psycho who only pretends to value human life!”

“Says the man who ate two people!”

“That was the alien that you brought here! You’re the one who brought man-eating monsters to earth then kept feeding people to them until they died too! You even treated the monsters shitty, that’s how much of a dickhead you are!”

**“Monsters?”**

Venom’s tone is mainly just curious, but a bit displeased as well.

Eddie barely hears Drake’s response.

“You just can’t understand that I’m doing what’s best for everyone, Brock!”

“No. You’re fucking everyone over. I’m done talking to you.” Eddie answers quietly.

“Fine. Go back to talking to yourself and starving.” Drake walks away. Then he stops and turns back. “How did you know that the symbiote within you is the last one?”

“Because I heard you yelling about it.”

“I never outright said that it was the last.”

“Again. I’m an investigative journalist. I can infer.”

Drake thinks for a moment then (thank god) walks away. Eddie sighs in relief.

**“You think my kind are monsters.”**

It was just a statement, without surprise or question. Just a vague hint of sadness in the tone.

Edd whispers back. “Well, yeah, uh, you kinda just are. You’re something straight out of a horror movie or a nightmare.”

**“Can you be friends with a monster?”**

“Sometimes…if the monster doesn’t do bad things.” Eddie says hesitantly.

**“Do I do bad things?”**

Eddie thinks for a moment.

“Well, you ate my heart, but you were starving. And you killed my friend, but that wasn’t really entirely your fault. I don’t know, you haven’t really had too many opportunities. I guess we’ll see when we get out of here.”

**“Hmm. I guess we will.”**

Venom seems thoughtful.

**……**

This is an odd planet. The people are odd. They care about each other. And so many other things. They show weakness so openly, yet they can be so fierce. Especially in the caring. Venom thinks the caring might be the strongest and fiercest emotion that the humans have.

Venom is different from Eddie. For the exact opposite reasons he differs from his own people. He thinks he might be drifting further from them and closer to humans. Maybe it’s this place driving him to bond with his host as closely as possible. Maybe the human caring is just like a ferocious virus.

Infectious.

**……**

As the rest of this day and most of the next passes the hunger grows and grows to the point where it’s all either of them can think about and it hurts. It’s starting to create the desperation Drake wanted.

“Okay,” Eddie whispers to Venom through his pounding headache. “I can probably get by with half a liver and one kidney.”

**“I know you are joking but I’m almost too hungry to care.”**

“Noted.” Eddie mopes.

Then, without entering the cage himself, a guard opens the door and tosses in a live rabbit. The door then closes and the restraints unlock.

Without thought Venom emerges and grabs the rabbit, snapping its neck and tossing it into his mouth in one swift motion. The hunger ebbs. A little.

“Magnificent.” Carlton Drake says from where he watches. He approaches the cell. “This is what human and symbiote combined looks like.” He looks reverent. Everyone else in the room is at least a little freaked out.

Venom does that thing that lions at the zoo sometimes do and tries to bite Drake’s head off through the wall. His teeth barely leave a scratch on the thick transparent material. One of the scientists runs out.

“Have a little dignity, please.” Drake says as Venom licks the wall with his very long tongue. “And please tell me all of you are taking notes.” He says as he turns around to the scientists who all quickly start typing. He turns back to the cell. “Of course we already have footage of you in this form, but seeing something in person is much more informative, don’t you think?”

Venom flips him off.

“A sign of intelligence…relative intelligence. So Eddie Brock is still in control of his actions and not some animal instinct.”

_“You’re looking right at him and the dumbass still has no idea you’re here.”_

“Can you speak in this form?”

Venom growls and drags his claws down the wall.

“Was this one’s first host a feral cat or has Brock just gone insane?” Drake asks his staff, annoyed.

“Um, I’d say insane, sir. What with all the talking to himself and…cannibalism. Maybe the human mind just can’t handle the presence of the symbiote.”

“Maybe…Unless…Talking to himself…Unless it’s not the human mind we’re dealing with here.”

_“Crap.”_

Venom backs up in shock.

Drake turns back, suddenly all magnanimous and smiling.

“Hello. It’s not Eddie Brock that I’m speaking to, is it?”

“I am the person who will tear you into pieces then eat them.” Venom says, sensing further subterfuge is pointless.

At the sound of his voice, another scientist runs out of the room in fear. Drake doesn’t flinch.

“And what is that person’s name?”

“Venom.” He practically hisses.

“Venom, it doesn’t have to be this way. Just because Eddie Brock is being uncooperative doesn’t mean we can’t work together towards mutual benefit. If you want, we can even get you a better host, do you have a way of sensing who you’re compatible with?”

Eddie feels a rush of panic at this suggestion, then questions his feelings.

“No!” Venom yells. “I will not leave Eddie! He is a perfect match and he is mine.”

Eddie feels a wave of relief. Then he really questions his feelings.

“Fair enough, you can keep his body if that’s what you want. I’m sorry you felt like he was the only one here you could talk to. I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement if we try.”

“Rot in hell, dickhead.” Venom replies with a smile.

“I’ll come back in the morning with more food, see if you’ve changed your mind.” Drake says, still smiling, and walks away.

Venom sinks back into Eddie’s skin and Eddie lets himself just flop down on the floor, he’s so sick of being strapped down into a standing position. He climbs into the cot and lays on his back and looks at the ceiling and thinks.

If Venom leaves him then Drake will have no use for him and probably kill him. Eddie tells himself that that’s the only reason he was worried before. But in the back of his mind there’s a part of him that feels like if Venom takes another host it’ll be a betrayal, an abandonment. Part of him wants a starving, extremely carnivorous, dubiously moral alien to stay in his body. He thinks this place might have actually driven him crazy.

**“Even if I were to find another perfect match, I would not leave you, Eddie. We are in this together.”**

Venom says, sensing his residual worry.

“Thanks. Thanks, Venom.” Eddie says, still a bit baffled by his own feelings but deciding to give up and just accept it.

**“Of course. This is what friends do.”**

……

Eddie is awoken in the middle of the night by a harsh tapping on the wall of his cell. He looks up and sees Dr. Skirth looking panickedly down at him and holding a briefcase.

“Get up. I can get you out of here.”

Eddie jumps to his feet as Skirth goes to the panel that controls the door. She looks at him.

“In this briefcase is all the evidence you should need to take Drake down. You have to promise me that if I do this you’ll make sure this gets to someone who can use it so I can be safe. So my family can be safe.”

“I promise.” Eddie says.

Skirth pauses. “Can you control Venom?”

“No.”

“How do I know he won’t kill me if I open this door?”

**“She is an ally. A friend. I will not harm her.”**

“He knows that we need your help. And that you’re not the enemy. He’s not gonna hurt you.”

Skirth pauses for another moment, then she opens the cell door.

Eddie runs outside of the cell as fast as he can. He can’t help himself. His heart starts racing at the feeling of being outside those walls for the first time in so long. Venom is revelling in the freedom too. Eddie can hear relieved laughter in his head.

**“It is good to be free.”**

“Hell yeah it is.”

“Okay.” Skirth says, tossing Eddie a gray, hooded sweatshirt and drawing their attention back to the fact that they’re not out of the woods yet. “We just have to make sure the guards outside the door don’t radio that something's wrong.

Venom brings himself to the surface after Eddie slips on the sweatshirt.

“Leave that to me.” He walks out the door and the guards’ screams at the sight of him are quickly cut short. Eddie walks back into the room.

“Okay, lead the way. And, uh, you might not want to look at the guards.”

“Okay.” Skirth is holding herself together with obvious strain. She leads them through the doors and down a maze of twisting halls, taking a different path than the one she used when first leading Eddie down to the lab. They make it to the elevator without being seen but as they run across the ground floor they run right into a guard tucked away in a corner reading a comic book.

The guard pulls out his gun and Eddie puts himself between Skirth and the line of fire and uselessly throws out his hand. He closes his eyes.

He opens them, after hearing several gunshots followed by a scream and running footsteps, and finds that a thick black ooze has formed a shield stretching out from his arm.

“Venom?”

**“Yes.”**

“I didn’t know you could do that. I didn’t know you were bulletproof!”

**“Yes.”**

Venom says, with something of a smug purr to his tone. The ooze pulls itself back under Eddie’s skin.

Skirth grabs Eddie’s arm.

“Come on, we gotta go before—”

She’s cut off by a loud alarm. They run for the exit. Once they get to the parking lot Eddie turns around and puts his hands on the door, trying to barricade it with his weight. Black ooze covers him from hands to shoulders and adds its strength to his own.

“Skirth, you need to leave!” He calls back. “Don’t use your car, steal someone else’s. Don’t stop driving until you have to then try to stick to public places. We’ll try to lead them in the other direction. Can you get out on your own from here?”

“Yes. Are…Are you sure you can handle this?”

“I think the playing field’s just about even.” Eddie snarks, trying to sound more confident than he is.

“Okay, here.” She tosses the briefcase at him, a black tendril catches it and holds it against Eddie’s chest. People arrive at the door and start trying to push it open. Eddie strains to hold them back.

“Go!” He yells. Then Venom spreads from his shoulders and completely takes over.

“Wait. Dr. Skirth.” Venom says. Skirth looks fearfully back at him. “Thank you. For trying to communicate with Agony. I am glad someone talked to them before they died.”

Skirth’s expression changes to surprise. “You’re…You’re welcome.”

“Now leave!”

“Right!” She runs off.

The pounding on the door gets more insistent.

“Helping Skirth is hindering our own escape.” Venom states. He still holds the door.

_“Friends help each other. And we owe her for helping us.”_

“Okay.” Venom says. He waits until they can no longer hear the sound of Skirth’s stolen car racing away from the building. “Let's have some fun.”

He removes his hands from the door and guards burst through and start shooting. Venom tosses them around gleefully, ignoring their bullets and making them scared and angry. Then he runs. Sure enough, all of the guards start chasing him and no one goes after Dr. Skirth.

Venom finds himself outside, then breaking through a fence, then in the woods. He uses the terrain to throw off the pursuit, swinging from trees and jumping off their trunks. Generally just parkouring the shit out of this break out.

_“So, we heading to the rocket?”_

Eddie asks.

“No. We need the element of surprise for that. We’ll have to come back later. Besides,” Venom holds the briefcase tighter. “First, we need to keep our promise.”

……

Eventually Venom makes it to the water and swims to the opposite shore with inhuman speed. Then he sinks back under Eddie’s skin.

Eddie takes a step. Then he stops. Then he gets down on his knees and shoves his hands into the dirt.

“Venom!” He practically yells. “We’re outside!”

**“Yes. Yes we are.”**

Venom says happily.

Eddie yells at the sky in triumph and starts laughing as he breathes in gulps of fresh air and revells in the wind on his face. After a moment he hears Venom laughing too.

……

The security guard at the building where Eddie once worked won’t let him past and Eddie rushes out the door while having a hushed argument with Venom.

“No! We are not eating him!”

**“But he is impeding us and I am hungry!”**

Eddie sighs as he walks into the night air. He walks around the side of the building, and makes sure no one’s around.

“Look, now that we’re outside the Life Foundation you can’t just eat anyone who gets in our way.”

**“I cannot?”**

Venom asks, and he materializes a tendril with a face to look quizzically at Eddie. Eddie jumps and yells in surprise when he sees this and again checks the area for anyone who might see him like this. There’s still no one.

“No. Only very very bad people.”

**“How do I know if a person is bad?”**

Eddie can’t quite tell if the voice is coming from the face he can see or if it’s still in his head. He thinks it might be both.

“You can usually intuit it…probably. Just ask me and I’ll let you know.”

**“Alright.”**

The head nods then recedes. Eddie looks down at the briefcase in his hand then up at the top of the building and sighs. Now to figure out his other problem.

**“You want up?”**

Venom asks.

**“Why didn’t you just say so?”**

……

Venom doesn’t stop at the window Eddie tells him to. He climbs all the way to the top of the building like goddamn King Kong and looks out over the city.

“Your world is not so ugly after all.” Venom says.

_“I’m, uh, not so great with heights.”_

“Even so, this view is a lot better than the one from inside Drake’s cage.”

Eddie takes a moment to push the fear out of his mind and really see the city stretched out beneath him. The vastness of it, the beauty, the freedom.

_“Yeah. Yeah it is.”_

They take a moment to admire the view before Venom swings down and through the window to the office of Eddie’s old boss and brings Eddie back to the surface. Eddie leaves the briefcase on the desk along with a note.

“There. We can check ‘Expose Drake’ off our to-do list.”

**“Good. Now jump.”**

“Absolutely not.”

**“I will get us down safely.”**

“That’s not the point! There’s no reason to—”

He’s cut off by the sound of a low-flying airplane. Without the building’s thick glass wall as a buffer it’s a deafening noise and it hurts like a bitch. Eddie covers his ears and freaks out.

And as he does he falls out the window.

He tumbles roughly for a few moments and just as he begins to process that after all the shit he’s just been through this is how he’s going to die he finds himself pulled upright and sliding to a halt. He looks up at his right hand and sees black claws digging into the building.

**“I got us.”**

Venom says. Then he engulfs Eddie completely and the pain of the injuries sustained in the tumble fades.

_“Thank you.”_

Eddie says as Venom gets then safely to the ground.

_“Thank you thank you thank you.”_

Once they get to the ground Venom moves back under Eddie’s skin.

**“Eddie…”**

He says, sounding preoccupied.

**“There is…a reason the others of my kind think of me as a loser.”**

The alien actually sounds really vulnerable in this moment. Eddie listens intently.

**“The others…they do not wish for the kind of bond with their host that I do. To them even a perfect match is just a means to an end, a tool to be consumed at the end of its usefulness.”**

Eddie feels a sour feeling in his stomach.

**“The fact that I wish for a permanent host—”**

And his heart rate picks up.

**“Makes me an outcast. And my kind would consider me outright insane if they knew I had grown to…that I care. After all that we have been through, Eddie, I care about you.”**

Eddie takes a deep breath and composes himself. Which is quite a feat considering all the information he was just given. He especially didn’t know how to feel about the possibility of being Venom’s permanent host. Indefinitely. That should really freak him out more than it does. But he decides to save those thoughts for when they don’t still have things they need to do.

“Well, I’m glad you’re a loser. I mean, I don’t think that stuff makes a loser but…just, thanks for not eating me.”

**“You are welcome, Eddie.”**

“And y'know what, I must be going crazy too because I care about you. After all, we are friends.”

**“And a friend is someone you care about.”**

“Yep. So are we headed to the rocket now?” Then he has a moment of fear. He doesn’t know what exactly Venom wants with a spaceship but there are several not-good options.

**“No.”**

Eddie guesses he’ll deal with those fears later.

**“First we must make sure we have not been followed. We need a place to wait for a few hours.”**

Eddie has an idea.

**“That is a bad idea.”**

Venom says, reading his mind.

“Do you have a better one?”

**“…”**

……

Eddie knocks on Anne’s door.

When she answers he pushes past her before she can say anything.

“Eddie?!”

“I know, I know, I’m so sorry, Anne, but I need to stay here just for a few hours and lay low.”

He walks straight to the kitchen, he’s still hungry and the he figures taking Anne’s food now is better than having to bite off someone’s head again later. He’s surprised, when he gets to the kitchen, to see a man there.

“Oh, hello.” The man introduces himself. “I’m Dan Lewis, Anne’s boyfriend.”

**“Bad guy? Food?”**

“No!” Eddie whispers harshly.

“Wait,” Dan says. “Are you Eddie Brock? Wow, I really love your work!”

“Seriously?!” Anne and Eddie say at once. Then Eddie just shakes his head and opens the fridge. He sees some raw meat. Perfect.

**“Dead.”**

Venom complains.

“It’s the freshest that you’re gonna get.” Eddie mutters and takes a bite of raw pork chop. It tastes disgusting. On an instinctual level though, he wants more.

Anne and Dan are both staring at him in confusion.

“Eddie! What’s going on?!” Anne yells angrily.

“Just listen.” Eddie says through a mouthful of uncooked meat. “I broke into the Life Foundation.”

“What?!”

“And then I had to break out of the Life Foundation. Carlton Drake kidnapped me.”

“Eddie, that’s ridiculous!”

“No, listen. Anne, I was right!” Eddie finishes the meat and moves to the freezer, hoping for something to get the taste out if his mouth. He grabs some chocolate ice cream. “They are up to some messed up shit!” He grabs a spoon.

“Okay. That’s it. Get out of my house!” Anne grabs him and begins pulling him towards the door.

“Anne, wait.” Dan says, and pulls her aside to talk.

Eddie digs into the ice cream. After so long without any real food suitable for human beings it tastes blissfully good. Venom agrees.

**“This substance. Chocolate. We must eat it as often as possible.”**

Venom practically purrs. Eddie hums in agreement. Then they pick up on what Dan’s been saying.

“—Erratic behavior. And look at him, he’s obviously been through something. We should get him to the hospital. He might need an MRI.”

Anne nods and turns towards Eddie.

“Eddie. We need to take you to the hospital, okay?” She says gently. “Dan is a doctor, he’s gonna check you out.”

“Um…”

**“I like her. We should do what she says.”**

Eddie figures that at least this might get Anne to believe that the Life Foundation did something to him without him having to go into detail as to what.

“Okay, yeah, let’s go to the hospital.”

……

The car ride to the hospital is awkward. Nobody says anything. Well, almost.

**“Anne seems nice.”**

“Shut up!” Eddie whispers.

“What was that?” Dan asks from the front seat.

“Oh, uh, nothing.” Eddie responds. Aware that he looks even crazier now.

**“Eddie, this is your chance to apologize to Anne.”**

Eddie says nothing. Does not react.

**“Eddie…Eddie…Eddie, apologize to Anne.”**

Eddie puts his head in his hands.

**“Eddie…Ah, I see. You wish to apologize when Dan is not around. We will wait until then.”**

Eddie sighs in relief. Quietly.

……

Other than that everything goes fine until they get to the MRI room.

“No. No no no no no.” Eddie says as he looks at the small sectioned off chamber containing the MRI machine and the table he’d have to lie on. He begins breathing fast. “No no listen we can not go in there.”

“Eddie—”

“No! Not again! And even if…the noise. The noise is too loud so let’s just all stay out here!”

Eddie is hyperventilating and full on freaking out, he can’t stop picturing himself back in Drake’s damn cell. Venom is freaking out even more so.

**“Not going back, never again, no more cages!”**

“Can’t be locked up like that again.” Eddie buries his head in his hands and tries to take deep breaths. He’s about to move to the exit when Dan puts a hand on his shoulder.

This turns out to be a very bad idea.

A clawed arm covered in black tarry slime grabs Dan by the throat and lifts him into the air. Anne screams, Dan starts clawing at the hand with his fingernails and choking. Eddie snaps back to reality.

“No. No! Let him down!”

**“He is trying to put us back into a cage!”**

“He’s only trying to help us, let go!”

Venom roars. Eddie sighs.

“Anne! Turn on the MRI!”

The noise is just like the alarm back at the lab and Venom immediately lets go of Dan to try to cover Eddie's ears. He starts screaming and collapses on the floor. Anne shuts the machine down but Eddie just stays on the floor and starts hyperventilating again, completely overwhelmed.

After a minute Anne reaches out a towards him but Dan holds her back. Then he speaks in a slow, quiet voice.

“Eddie? What’s wrong?”

“We don’t want to go back.” Eddie says through his shaky breaths. “We just…just got out of that cage, we don’t want to be locked up again.”

“Do you want to leave the hospital? Go back home with us?”

Eddie nods. “Yes. Get me out of here.” He pulls himself up to his knees. Dan offers a hand to help him to his feet and he takes it.

**……**

Venom is not used to being out of control. He is not used to control mattering to him.

But now it does matter because Eddie had been so scared that Venom would hurt Dan and Venom doesn’t really understand why. Just like he doesn’t really understand why he himself had felt so consumed by fear back in the hospital.

He can sense that Eddie has some idea of why. Something to do with trauma and its lasting effects on the brain. But mainly he is just recovering from his own all-consuming fear.

Venom knows one thing clearly in his mind, no matter what happens he will not let himself be alone again. And he will not let Eddie be alone either.

As soon as they are out of sight of unknown humans Venom manifests tendrils and wraps them all around Eddie’s body, holding him as tight as he can without restricting breathing.

Anna and Dan gasp in shock but Eddie just puts a hand on one of the tendrils and begins saying soothing words.

“It’s okay. We’re okay.”

We’re okay.

_We._

They will be okay. As long as they are together they will be okay.

**……**

The car ride back is beyond awkward. Anne and Dan say nothing. Eddie is in the back seat with his knees folded up to his chest. Black tendrils are wrapping around him possessively. As if they’re trying to physically keep him from falling apart. Two of them wrap around his hands and he clasps them tight and whispers reassurances the whole way back.

“We’re safe. We’re free. We’re never going back. You’re not alone. I’m not alone.” He’s trying to comfort himself as much as he’s trying to comfort Venom.

Once they get to Anne’s house the tendrils recede as Anne helps him out of the car and to her couch. She puts a blanket around his shoulders. Eddie realizes that he’s shaking. Dan brings him a cup of coffee. He sips it.

**“Bluh. Bitter.”**

“It’ll help.” Eddie reassures him.

Anne and Dan sit across from Eddie.

“Okay.” Anne says. “What the hell happened to you?”

Eddie takes a deep breath and another sip of coffee and starts talking.

“A scientist from the Life Foundation came to me. She said she wanted to expose what Drake was doing. She said he was doing experiments on homeless people that killed them. That his space probe had found these alien…creatures. They called them symbiotes. Drake was trying to get these creatures to bond with humans but the people he used kept dying. The scientist snuck me in and I was gathering evidence and…I did something stupid. I saw someone I knew and she was alive so I broke her out. Then the symbiote that was in her moved to me and she died and I got locked up by Drake’s goons. Eventually, Skirth, the scientist that brought me there in the first place, she helped us escape. We got the evidence of what’s going on to my old boss and I thought here would be a good place to hide out to make sure we weren’t followed. After all, who’d expect me to be here?” Eddie doesn’t want to say that he also had nowhere else to go.

“Eddie, that’s crazy.” Anne says.

“Yeah.” Eddie says holding up his arm to show black tar appearing and receding. “But it’s true.”

“So when you say ‘we’… ”

“I mean me and the alien, yeah. His name is Venom.”

“So are you dying? Like the others?”

“No. As long as I keep venom fed he says he won’t eat my organs anymore.”

“…He talks to you.”

“Yeah, in my head. I know it sounds—”

“I believe you. And he…ate your organs before?”

“Yeah, they had me hooked up to a bunch of monitors and I could hear them talking about how my heart had atrophied at first but then it got better after Venom ate…after he ate something. He repaired it. And he didn’t try to eat it again even when Drake was starving us.”

“That’s why you raided the fridge.” Dan says. Chiming in for the first time since Eddie’s initial explanation.

“Yeah. We’re always hungry.”

“Eddie…” Anne sounds hesitant. “How long were you in the Life Foundation?”

“What day is it?”

“Tuesday.” Dan answers.

“About a week.”

Anne and Dan look shaken.

“Eddie, how did that happen? Wasn’t anyone looking for you?”

“I was, uh, kind of hoping you would. Not that I had any reason to, but, y’know.”

There’s an awkward silence.

“And before that, how long was…Venom there?” Anne asks.

Venom provides Eddie with the answer. His blood runs cold.

“Oh god, six months.”

Anne covers her mouth with her hands.

“Well then, your reaction in the hospital certainly makes sense.” Dan says, sounding even more shook up and rubbing at his neck.

“Dan, I am so sorry about that.”

“It’s okay.” Dan says sincerely. “I don’t blame you. Either of you.”

Even Venom is having trouble hating Dan at this point.

“Eddie, how do we get that thing out of you?” Anne asks.

Suddenly Venom is surrounding Eddie and standing, towering over them. Both Anne and Dan scream.

“Never gonna happen!” Venom yells. “Eddie is mine!” Then he retreats back under Eddie’s skin.

“That.” Eddie says, chastisingly. “Was incredibly rude.”

“What the fuck?!” Anne stands up and yells.

“Just listen!”

“Stop saying that!”

“He’ll die without me! He needs me, he needs my lungs or he won’t be able to breathe.”

“Why do you care?!”

“When I was in…that place…Annie, it was so horrible. I was scared and trapped and at first I thought I was alone but I wasn’t. Venom was with me. So at least I wasn’t going through all of that shit alone, we had each other. We were in it together…Anne, he’s my friend.”

Anne is about to respond when there’s a harsh knock at the door.

“Fuck. We need to leave.” Eddie says.

“It might not be the Life Foundation.” Dan suggests.

Armed men in body armor kick open the door and a small swarm of them funnel inside. They raise their guns immediately upon seeing Eddie.

Eddie should be terrified, he knows that. But mainly he feels angry. A bit at himself for coming here in the first place, but mostly at the gunmen.

“You do not want to do this, guys.” He says as he moves to confront them. “Not here.”

The one in front shoots him in the kneecap. He yells and goes down. Anne screams. Dan tries to run forward but one of the others points a gun at him.

Then Eddie stands up. “I told you. You don’t want to do this.” There’s a warm feeling in his knee as Venom completely repairs the damage.

All the guns turn back to him. “Listen, freak. I’m gonna give you and your alien bug to the count of three—”

“We’re gonna give you to the count of one.”

“Huh?”

“Anne! Dan! Get down!” Eddie leaps at the group of armed men and by the time he lands on top of the one in front Venom’s full form is the one who begins ripping guns away from the others as they shoot at them.

Once all the guns are taken care of he goes after the men themselves, throwing them around until they all lay motionless on the floor. He picks up the one who shot Eddie, who begins screaming in fear.

“Bad guy?” Venom asks.

_“Yeah. But—”_

Venom is already biting the man’s head off. He shifts back to Eddie as Anne screams and Dan looks like he’s about to faint.

“I really wish you hadn’t seen that.”

“What are you?!” Anne demands and Eddie realizes that she’s talking to Venom. “What are you doing to Eddie?!”

Venom shifts back “I am protecting him!”

“You ate someone’s head!”

“He was a bad guy! He shot us!”

_“I don’t think we have time for this conversation right now.”_

“You’re right.”

“What?! What’s he saying?!”

Venom shifts back to Eddie. Eddie would have expected all this switching back and forth to be pretty jarring, but it isn’t. The shift between him and Venom is actually starting to feel pretty natural. Like a game of catch between two people, they’ve fallen into a rhythm. Eddie doesn’t stop to consider that that fact doesn’t freak him out.

“Guys, we all gotta go. Now. More of them are probably coming.”

“Okay.” Anne says. “Where are we going?”

**“She cannot come with us.”**

“What? Why not? She can help.”

“Yeah, let me help!”

**“It is too dangerous.”**

“We can protect her, and Anne can fight pretty rough.”

“Listen! You two brought me into this and now I’m gonna see it through! Understand?”

**“…Fine. She can drive us back to the Life Foundation. Walking would be tiring.”**

“Okay, Anne, get the car.”

……

“Okay, where to?” Anne asks once everyone is back in the car.

“Back to the Life Foundation.” Eddie answers.

“What? Why?” Anne says, but starts driving.

“Venom needs to get to Drake’s rocket.”

“Why?”

**“To destroy it.”**

“Wait, that’s what you want? To destroy it?”

“Why?” Anne asks again.

**“To prevent Riot from using it.”**

“Riot?”

“Who’s Riot?”

**“Another of my kind.”**

“Another alien.”

“There are more of them on earth?!”

“I thought all the others died in the lab?” Eddie questions.

**“Riot escaped when the ship that brought us here crashed.”**

“And he left all the rest of you behind?!” Eddie says angrily.

**“Riot is not sentimental.”**

“He sounds like a dickhead.” The thought of someone being able to save Venom and the others from six months of torturous captivity and not doing so infuriated him. “What would he do with the ship?”

**“He would bring more of my people to this planet and they would consume all life on it.”**

Eddie is shocked into silence for several moments. Eventually he says the only thing he can. “Venom, has the plan always been to destroy the rocket?”

**“…No.”**

“At what point did that start being the plan?”

**“…I don’t know.”**

“Okay.” Eddie takes a deep breath. “Okay…Guys, we’re destroying the rocket to save the world.”

Anne almost crashes the car.

……

They’re about as close to the Life Foundation as they can get without being noticed when Anne asks. “Can we win this?”

**“Yes, easily.”**

“Yeah. Yeah, we can.”

**“Until Riot shows up.”**

“What?”

**“And then our chances of survival drop to just about zero.”**

“What.” Eddie sees Anne and Dan staring worriedly at him. “Um, we need to destroy the rocket before Riot shows up.”

“Okay.” Anne says. And drives the car through the security checkpoint.

The car is decidedly banged up and the only reason Eddie doesn’t have whiplash is the black tendrils anchoring him to the backseat but everyone is mostly okay. Then they’re confronted by more men with guns.

“Shit.” Anne says.

Eddie throws out a hand and black goop extends from it, covering the windshield and absorbing the incoming bullets.

“Get to the back and get down!”

Anne and Dan awkwardly switch places with him and get under the seats. As soon as they’re under cover Eddie jumps through the windshield and the black goop encases him. Venom lands among the guards and makes short work of them. Then Eddie runs back to the car.

“You guys okay?” He asks.

“We’re fine!” Anne calls out. “But I think we’ll have to walk from here.” Eddie helps her out of the car.

“That’s, um, gonna be a problem for me.” Dan says, and moves his hand to show blood, seeping out from the bullet wound just above his knee.

“Oh shit!” Eddie yells. Anne gasps.

“It’s okay.” He says, already making a tourniquet out of his belt. “It missed everything major, I’m not gonna die. I’m just gonna have to sit this fight out. Anne, can you get the first-aid kit from the glovebox?”

“Right.” She says, and does so.

They patch Dan up the best they can and then move him out of the car and far enough from the road that no one will see him.

“If we don’t come back in…I’ll let you decide the timeframe, but if things go to shit call 911.” Eddie says.

“Right.” Dan gives him a thumbs up.

Anne says a touching goodbye to Dan that Eddie tries not to pay attention to.

Then Anne and Eddie start walking.

**“Now’s the time.”**

Venom says after a minute.

“Right. Anne, before we do this I need to tell you something.”

“Eddie—”

“I’m so sorry. What I did to you was wrong on so many levels, and then I never even took responsibility for it. I blamed it all on Drake, and the fact that he is doing bad shit doesn’t change what I did. Annie, I care about about you more than anyone else in the world and I am so sorry for everything I’ve done that’s hurt you.”

“Eddie…Thank you…But let's just focus on saving the world and making sure none of us die for now.”

“Alright.” Eddie says with a smile.

**“Aw, that’s nice. She wants you to live.”**

“Wait…” Anne says. “Did Venom tell you to apologize?”

“He, uh, reminded me…And he helped me realize that I needed to.”

Anne laughs. “Well then, thank you too, Venom.”

**“Oh, I really like her.”**

“Oh god, look!” Anne says. She points to the rocket in the distance, it looks like it’s getting ready to take off.

“But that must mean—”

“Hello, Eddie.” Carlton Drake appears in the distance and begins approaching.

“Drake! What the fuck is going on?!” Eddie yells.

“Something beyond your understanding, Brock.” Then he pulls out a gun. “And something I can’t have you interfering with.”

“That’s not gonna work too good on me.” Eddie snarks.

“I know.” Drake says, and shoots Anne in the gut.

He runs away as fast as he can as Eddie falls to the ground and tries to help put pressure on the wound.

“Oh god oh god, Annie! Annie, talk to me!” But she looks like she’s struggling to breathe already.

**“Eddie. I can help.”**

  
“How.”

**“I can heal her like I heal you.”**

“What?”

**“She is a good match, Eddie. Not as good as you, but good enough. I can save her.”**

All Eddie can think about is Anne’s blood under his hands. “Okay.” He says. Then he sees Venom leave him and sink into Anne’s skin.

The bleeding stops. Her breathing stabilizes. She’s unconscious for now, but she’s not dying. Eddie removes his hands. He stands up and looks down at Anne, lying on the ground. He’s furious that she’s hurt and he’ll admit that a part of him is also furious that Venom has had to leave him.

He looks off in the direction that Drake ran. “It’s time to finish this.”

He makes it a few steps before a security guard knocks him out.

……

Eddie wakes up in a small room strapped to a chair. He’s a prisoner of the Life Foundation once again and this time he is alone. He wants to cry. He starts hyperventilating when no deep raspy voice calls him a pussy for wanting to cry.

Then Carlton Drake walks into the room. He looks Eddie over.

“The symbiote left you.” He barely sounds disappointed. “It must have gone to find a new host when you were captured. I wanted you distracted enough that my team could sneak up on you but this is better than I could have hoped for.” He leans in close. “Now, I have no use for you.”

Eddie clenches his teeth through his panic and works to keep his eyes on the prize.

“What are you doing with the rocket, Drake?”

“I’m going to lead humanity into a new era.” He says and turns his back to Eddie.

“Drake, you don’t understand, they’re gonna kill everyone.”

“They’re going to do whatever we tell them to do.”

“What makes you think…Wait…Aw, shit.”

Drake turns back around but as he does it’s no longer Drake. It’s something dark gray and huge with more teeth than should be possible. Eddie screams.

“Do you know where Venom is?” The thing that must be Riot asks with a voice full of impatience and disgust.

“You are the ugliest thing I have ever seen in my life!” Eddie yells back. Riot frowns.

“Then there’s no use for you. I could eat you,” The symbiote suggests. Eddie has never been more scared, tears stream down his face, he attempts to spit in Riot’s eye but misses.

“But I’m in a hurry.” Riot continues, all but ignoring him. “It took me longer to get into this building than I would have liked. I need to complete my mission. With or without Venom.” He turns to the door. Eddie yells the one thing that he thinks might shake Riot up.

“Do you even care that your host killed Phage and Agony?”

He pauses.

“Why would that be at all relevant?” And he shifts back to Drake and leaves.

“Well…Fuck.” Eddie says after a minute.

After another minute a security guard walks into the room and pulls his gun.

“Normally we’d take you out into the woods, to keep from making a mess.” He says casually. “But knowing your reputation I’d rather not take the risk of untying you, even though your extraterrestrial attack dog abandoned you.”

Eddie feels helpless. He’s going to die, then the world’s going to end. And his last thought is going to be that he was right that first night when he was so afraid that he was going to die here scared, tied up, and alone. The guard points his gun at him.

Then there’s a distant crash. Then another. Then sounds of screaming join the noises. The guard turns away.

“What the hell.” He tries to contact someone on his radio.

Eddie hears a ferocious roar from outside the room. It sounds distorted but…familiar. Suddenly there’s hope.

……

Anne woke up alone in the woods and confused. As she remembered how she got there she yelled and put a hand to her stomach. It was covered in blood but didn’t hurt and Anne could find no wound.

“What?” She asked.

**“I healed you, Anne.”**

She screamed.

**“Shh! No one must hear us.”**

“V-Venom?” She asked. “Is that you?”

**“Yes. You were severely injured by Drake’s bullet. Leaving Eddie was the only way to save your life.”**

“Wow…” Anne said, a bit at a loss for words.

**“But now we must go! Eddie is in danger!”**

“What?!”

**“Drake had men hidden in the forest and they took him! We have to get him back! We have to go!”**

“Okay, calm down—”

**“We cannot let him be trapped in that place! Not again! Not alone! We will save him even though it means going back there!”**

The force of these words hit Anne hard, both because of Venom’s insistent tone and the fear that was clearly underneath it.

“I need you to tell me one thing before we go. It’s extremely important.”

**“Make it quick.”**

“Why do you care about Eddie.”

**“…We are a perfect match. He does not reject me at all.”**

“But you could find another—”

**“No! It is not just the physical compatibility. Eddie does not fight me with his mind. We can cooperate.”**

“If he did fight, could he win?”

**“No.”**

“Then why?! Why does that matter to you?!”

**“Because Eddie is my friend! I like having him around and he makes me feel less alone and I care about him. And…I believe he is the first being ever to care about me.”**

Anne thought for a moment.

“Alright.” She said. “Let’s go. Lead the way.”

……

“Hey!” Eddie yells. “I’m in here!”

“You shut the fuck up!” The guard yells back.

But then the wall is reduced to rubble and the guard’s getting his head ripped from his body by long sharp teeth. Eddie laughs in relief.

“Hi, Eddie.” Says Venom with a distorted version of Anne’s voice.

And then Venom and Anne are kissing him and this is the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to him. But he still leans into it.

He feels power, feels Venom, flowing through his veins once more and as Anne stumbles back he rips free of the restraints. He hadn’t realized just how empty he’s felt physically until Venom was back.

“Oh god.” Anne says. “I just ate someone’s head.”

“Yeah.” Eddie replies. “I’ve been there. It’s not fun.” But he can’t keep a smile off his face. “You came back for me.” He says, and it’s directed towards both of them.

“Of course we did!”

**“We’re in this together, Eddie.”**

“I missed you.” He says quietly and half surprised to Venom.

**“Of course you did. But now, it seems, everything has gone to shit.”**

“Yeah, that’s definitely a fair assessment.”

“What is it? What’s going on?”

“Riot’s here. He’s bonded with Drake.”

“Well fuck!”

“That’s what I said!”

“What do we do now?” Anne asks.

**“This fight is far too dangerous for her. Riot is much stronger than me. He has shit you have never seen.”**

“Anne, stay here. Try to find some way to stop the launch or destroy the rocket from inside the building, some kind of ‘mission control’ room. alright?”

“Okay, but what are you going to do?”

“We’re gonna go fight Riot.”

“That seems like a really bad decision.”

“It’d be a hell of a time for me to start making good ones. Goodbye, Annie.” He starts to walk off but Anne grabs his arm and pulls him back.

“Be careful, both of you. Try not to die.”

Eddie leans in close and kisses her on the forehead.

“We will.”

……

The rocket is a ways away so Eddie has lots of time to think about how screwed he is while Venom runs towards it.

_“So,”_

He starts, trying to take his mind off his worry.

_“Why exactly are you betraying your entire race and running into a suicide mission to save the earth? Not that I don’t appreciate it, but, why?”_

“I believe that I will… _fit in_ better here on earth than with my people. There, I was a loser. But here, among all of you weak little humans, I can be more than that.”

_“Well, alright then. So is there any sort of plan here or is it just—”_

“Get to the rocket. Stop it. Kill Riot. If possible don’t die in the process.”

_“Great. Well, if we’re just winging this and so are definitely about to die tell me one more thing.”_

“Yes?”

_“What really made you change your mind?”_

“…You did, Eddie.”

This makes Eddie think. About a lot of things.

_“…Hey, Venom? Y’know what you said before about wanting a permanent host, wanting us to stay together permanently?”_

“Yes.” Venom says with a hint of nervousness.

_“Well, the feeling’s mutual. Now let’s go save the world so we can both be a little bit less of a loser together.”_

……

Riot is walking towards the ship when venom crashes onto the walkway in front of him.

“Venom! Get in the rocket!”

“No. I’m staying. And you are not leaving. We will defend this world from you and the rest of our people!”

“Venom. Really? You are a ‘we’ now, are you?” Riot scolds angrily. “You’ve gotten attached to your host! This is why you are considered weak! You will get on the rocket with me, bring our people to this world, and devour it! Including your current host! For once, be normal! Be what you are supposed to be!”

Venom was quiet a moment before answering.

“No. I refuse to be a parasite!”

“Then die!” Riot turns his arms into huge blades and brings them down on Venom, who barely manages to duck out of the way in time.

_“Holy shit! Holy shit!”_

“I told you.”

The two symbiotes spring at each other lightning fast. Grabbing and tearing and slicing and biting in such a furious flurry that Eddie can barely tell who’s winning.

Until Riot rips Venom out of Eddie and drops Eddie unceremoniously to the floor of the launch pad . Then Riot’s definitely winning.

Eddie watches Venom squirm helplessly in Riot’s grip and pulls himself forward as fast as he can. Then he runs into a hulking gray mass that picks him back up.

“Well.” Riot says with a suffocating Venom in one hand and a struggling Eddie in another. “It looks like your little pet is loyal, Venom. I suppose I should probably get rid of it.” Riot brings Eddie up over his gaping maw of needle teeth and Eddie screams. Venom struggles harder in Riot’s grasp.

Just then, a terrible loud noise erupts across the launch pad. Riot drops the both of them and screams, eventually separating from Drake due to the strain of the noise.

“Anne.” Eddie says. “She found mission control.”

Then Carlton Drake punches him in the face.

“Ow!” He punches back. “Drake! Can’t you see that Riot’s just using you? He doesn’t care about your goals, you’re just food and transportation to him!”

“You’re wrong!” Drake tackles him. “I’m special! Riot sees that! We will lead together!”

Eddie flips him over. “Were you not listening to anything he just said?! You idiot! You and Riot are a match because you’re the same kind of narcissistic hypocrite who only pretends that other people’s lives matter to you! You’re both dickheads!” He ends his rant with another punch and leaves Drake on the ground. He runs towards the far end of the launchpad.

“Venom!” He calls. “Ve—”

He’s cut off by the blade running through his entire torso. Riot doesn’t even stop to gloat before moving to get in the rocket.

Eddie falls to the ground. Everything hurts like nothing he’s ever experienced before and his vision and ability to think are both fading. The last thing he sees is Venom emerging from a nearby vent. He moves a hand weakly towards him. Then he’s in the dark.

**……**

In the moment, Venom isn’t furious at Riot. He can’t be, there’s no room to be anything but scared. Terrified.

He rebonds with Eddie and oh he’s just in time just barely in time. He knits Eddie’s insides back together, surrounds him, removes the blade. He waits until he feels Eddie’s thoughts click on again as he wakes up.

_“That hurt like a bitch.”_

Venom smiles. Then he snarls. Now there is room for anger

It’s time to finish this.

**……**

Eddie knows he’s not dead because he’s sore. And because after a moment he can think clearly again and he finds himself in a familiar situation. The darkness surrounding him is one he knows.

_“Venom.”_

Eddie says with intense relief.

“Save your gratitude for later.” The rocket begins to take off. “Right now we have a planet to save.”

The look on Drake and Riot’s faces when Venom drags the blade through the rocket is perfect, priceless. Getting caught in the resulting explosion is less perfect.

**……**

They’re going go die. The heat, the fall, it’ll all be too much. They won, but they were going to die.

Venom thinks about Eddie. How he had almost just lost Eddie. How he had been completely willing to walk back into the place that had once been his prison just to save Eddie. How he never wants anything bad to happen to Eddie ever again.

Venom understands now. Really understands.

A friend is someone you make sacrifices for.

So he forms himself into a parachute that shields Eddie from the heat and breaks his fall. Eddie will live. That is enough.

**“Goodbye, Eddie. My friend.”**

Venom hears Eddie calling out for him as he burns and it’s bittersweet. He’s so glad he found someone he could be with forever. Even if forever got cut short.

**……**

The water hits Eddie like the realization of what Venom was doing and he loses the last of his breath as he sinks among the wreckage. It takes his survival instinct a moment to kick in and make him pull himself to the surface.

The air he gasps a breath of is full of smoke and he coughs and starts making his way towards shore. Once he gets there he pulls himself onto his hands and knees and starts crying.

It’s not fair. He realizes he wants Venom to stay with him and then the symbiote goes and dies to save him. They had finally defeated the Life Foundation, gotten revenge on the people who kept them in cages, and even finished their half sarcastic to-do list. But now there was no they. Now Eddie was alone. All alone.

He hears Anne call his name and tries to pull himself together. He gets to his feet.

“Eddie!” She hugs him. “Are you okay? I saw that huge explosion and I was so worried!”

“Yeah, um, I…I’m okay, I’m not hurt.”

Anne must hear something in his tone.

“Eddie, what’s wrong?”

“It’s…uh…Venom’s dead, Annie. He died saving me.”

She hugs him again and he cries into her shoulder.

……

They go get Dan and somehow convince an uber driver to come to what is surely about to become a crime scene. Luckily their ride gets there before the first responders.

Anne and Dan get dropped off at the hospital and, having nowhere else to go, Eddie goes back to the apartment he was recently kicked out of.

He’s unbelievably lucky. It turns out his landlord was a bit spooked by his sudden disappearance and hadn’t touched his stuff in case the police came looking for him. He’s able to convince said landlord to give him a few more days to get the money and suddenly he’s home again. Like all of this never happened.

He peels off his wet clothes, showers, and crawls into bed. It’s been so long since he slept in a bed. He almost wants to lie awake and cry but his tired body takes over and obliterates his pained thoughts as he sinks into unconsciousness.

**……**

There was burning. Then there was darkness. Nothing.

Now there’s something. Something faint.

Sadness. Grief. Exhaustion.

Loneliness.

He waits, builds up his strength. He grows and grows until he can do something about the thing he feels the most.

Hunger.

**……**

Eddie awakes because of the cold. The freezer door is still open and he’s surrounded by an empty carton of ice cream and a half devoured bag of frozen tater tots.

It would be stupid to hope. To not just write this off as the weirdness of the past week causing a freak sleepwalking incident. It would be stupid.

Eddie Brock was never good at making smart decisions anyway.

He’s still hungry, so hungry, so he puts the rest of the tater tots in the oven and pulls out everything still edible in his fridge and cabinets.

He eats. And eats.

And when his asshole neighbor starts blasting loud music Eddie walks over and physically threatens him into stopping.

When he’s eaten all the food he has he gets back in bed.

He’s not tired but he surrounds himself with soft and quiet and calm in the hope that it’ll help somehow. Eventually he starts to doze.

**……**

By the time Venom is aware enough and full enough to realize what he’s done it’s too late, he’s already done it. Again.

He’s damaged his host and does not have the strength to repair him. After everything, after betraying his people and giving his own life for Eddie, he’s hurt him. He’s hurt his friend.

The most damaged is the heart. It beats weakly and slowly. Venom cannot heal it. But he can pick up the slack.

He wraps a mass of tarry slime around the atrophied organ. And he helps.

**……**

Eddie wakes with a start and puts a hand to his chest. His heart is suddenly beating much harder than it was a second ago. And his chest feels…weird. Not tight, but almost heavy. It’s not an uncomfortable weight, it doesn’t make it hard to breathe, but it definitely wasn’t there before.

He falls back against his pillow.

“Jesus. What the fuck is happening to me now?”

**“Eddie.”**

Eddie is suddenly completely alert. He’s almost scared to move or breath and he hopes with every fiber of his being that this isn’t a dream.

**“You are awake, Eddie. I’m here.”**

Eddie lets out the breath he’s holding in a relieved laugh and he sits up.

“Really? And I’m not going crazy?”

**“No. You are not.”**

Suddenly a film of tar is bubbling up from his chest. He puts a hand against it and it clings to him. Holding his hand there.

Eddie starts laughing again.

“Oh thank god. Venom, buddy, you had me so scared.”

**“I am sorry, Eddie.”**

“Just don’t do it again, man.”

**“Eddie, there is something I must tell you.”**

Venom’s tone us serious. It makes Eddie nervous.

“What?”

**“I was…not completely conscious of my actions. While I was recovering. And I was so hungry…Eddie, I consumed more of your organs.”**

“Okay…but you can fix them, right?”

**“I do not currently have the strength.”**

“Shit. Am I gonna die?”

**“No! No, I will not allow that. Nothing is damaged enough to cause immediate danger and I am assisting the most damaged organ.”**

Eddie feels the steady beat under the ooze on his chest.

“My heart.”

**“Yes.”**

Eddie thinks for a moment.

**“Eddie…are we still friends?”**

“Yeah. Yeah we are Venom. I know you couldn’t help yourself. And now you’re doing your best to make up for it. I’m not mad.”

Eddie feels the mental equivalent of a sigh of relief from Venom and the mass on his chest releases his hand and sinks back beneath his skin. Eddie keeps his hand there anyway, feeling Venom move his heart.

**“Eddie. I need more food in order to grow strong enough to repair you. Flesh. Organs. Chocolate.”**

Eddie laughs.

“Okay, let’s see what I can scrounge up.”

……

When Eddie leaves his apartment he is pleasantly surprised to find a package waiting for him. Dr. Skirth has mailed him the clothes he was wearing when he first went into the Life Foundation, along with the contents of his pockets. Including his wallet. He doesn't have a lot of cash, but it’s something.

“That’s a relief, I thought I was gonna have to beg Mrs. Chen to give me something on credit.”

Eddie makes his way down to the convenience store and greets its owner as he walks in.

“Eddie!” She practically yells. “Where have you been? I was worried!”

Eddie laughs. “You would not believe the week I’ve had, Mrs. Chen.”

He begins scanning the isles and talking quietly.

“Okay. Meat, chocolate, what else?”

**“Tater tots.”**

Eddie chuckles as he moves to the frozen food section. He can’t believe how much he’s laughing today considering how much he cried the day before.

**Just then that asshole with his gun and his entitlement walks into the store.**

**“Bad guy?”**

Venom asks, responding to Eddie’s anger.

“Yep.” Eddie says. And he smiles.

Mrs Chen is arguing with the man.

“I already paid you this month! Go away!”

The man pulls out his gun. Then a clawed hand tapps him on the shoulder.

“Hey, asshole.” Venom says. And it's the last thing the man ever hears.

Eddie makes sure Venom doesn’t leave a bloody mess on the floor.

To Mrs. Chen’s credit, she doesn’t scream. But when Venom shifts back to Eddie she looks thoroughly shaken.

“Eddie…what was that?”

“Oh, yeah, I have a parasite. Have a nice day, Mrs. Chen!” Eddie calls as he walks out the door.

Then, about a minute later, he walks back in, grabs the bag of tots off the floor and a couple candy bars, leaves a twenty on the counter, and walks back out.

“There, that enough of an apology for you?” Eddie says.

**“I am not a parasite, Eddie. I am already repairing your damaged organs.”**

“I told you, it’s a term of endearment. Now, let’s head home. I have like sixty voicemails to listen to.”

**“That seems like it will be boring.”**

“Yeah, well, after that, we can do whatever we want.”

**“I like the sound of that.”**


End file.
